


it's too important to stay the way it's been

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Kiss, Kissing, Late Night Conversations, Post 2x01, Realization, Unresolved Sexual Tension, not Grant Ward friendly, spoilers for 2x01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2384078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They talk about the mission, they talk about Ward. Maybe they talk about the future as well.</p>
<p>(Post 2x01 fluff)</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's too important to stay the way it's been

"Skye."

It takes him a bit to notice her presence in the common room. Skye felt strange watching him walk in the half darkness, out of his jacket and tie, oblivious to anything but the worries showing naked on his face. Now she watches him walk to the fridge, look for something inside, get frustrated at not finding it.

Skye can tell what he wants.

She is sitting on the couch, working with her tablet over her knees, working on small, minute stuff that nonetheless has to be done, working on something which doesn't remind her of the day they've just had. One of her seven or eight kinds of responsibilities she has in this new SHIELD.

"Here," she says to Coulson, pointing at the cooler under the table. "Tried to keep people from raiding our fridge."

She makes a face, remembering what happened to Hartley's team today.

Coulson sits by her side on the couch and she hands him a bottle, putting her work away. He throws his head back, groaning with exhaustion. Longest day wouldn't even begin to cover it, she guesses.

He closes his eyes for a moment and Skye takes a long look at his profile. It's been weeks since she last saw him. There was a time where not a day went by without seeing his face. She had got used to that. She can't get used to this. Part of her wants to memorize his features in case he goes away again. In this half light his new haircut looks like an invitation to touch his neck and Skye has missed him more than she had realized. But then he opens his eyes and she has to pretend she hasn't been looking at him.

She holds the beer in her hand, cold and it would be comforting, if anything tonight could.

Coulson drinks quietly, without much pleasure in it.

"I should be in Montevideo by now," he tells her, looking at his watch.

"What is in Montevideo?"

"Some old friends," he explains cryptically. Sometimes Skye remembers she still doesn't know much about him. "Went into hiding when HYDRA took our South American headquarters. I was thinking of getting them out of hiding."

He's been doing that kind of stuff a lot. She understands – but sometimes the thought of him being across the world from her makes Skye lonely. It's ridiculous – worse, it is _childish_ – and it is very recent.

"You have your work cut out for you."

"Yeah," he nods, putting the beer down and turning to Skye for the first time. His eyes look weird in this light. "Except running around the world doesn't get people killed."

"You didn't get them killed."

"I did," he says quietly. "But I knew what I signed up for when I accepted Director Fury's job. I don't have the right to complain now."

Skye shifts in her seat, turning to her side to look at Coulson face to face. It makes them seem closer somehow. Maybe they are closer. Maybe Coulson chose to sit a little too close from the start.

"Had you known Agent Hartley for a long time?" she asks.

"A really long time, it makes me feel old. Since the Academy. She liked to get off the grid often so we really didn't keep in touch but... yes, a long, long time."

"Coulson, I'm so sorry."

She wants to touch him, comfort him, close her hand around his. She doesn't. The restraint is not a Director-Agent thing, it's not a protocol thing, it was there from the beginning.

"Thank you."

She told herself she wasn't going to go there, that she wouldn't let her mind find that particular dark spot, but in this case Coulson is not the only one carrying a burden.

"It was also my fault," she confesses, and it feels good to _tell him_. "I was protecting myself when I should have been thinking about everybody else. I should have said I'd go to Ward earlier, we could have had that intel weeks ago and Hartley's people–"

His eyes narrow at her, soft and worried and with that beautiful light in them. Were they always so striking? A couple of weeks is not enough to miss someone this much, Skye decides, so this is something which must have been here all along. 

"Skye."

"It's true."

He sighs.

"What I asked of you you today... I keep thinking of alternatives, ways in which I could have avoided doing that to you. I keep running scenarios in my mind but I come up empty. I can't find a way to stop it."

"Coulson, you didn't put me in that situation. Ward did."

"Still."

Yeah, still, she thinks. 

She thinks it's good that she can blame him a bit for it. She thinks it binds them. So she is not alone with Ward, so she is never alone with him. Coulson is part of this as well, so that he is with Skye when she goes down to that vault. She blames him and she keeps him by her side.

But she doesn't want him to protect her. If she can't protect herself, that's on her. If the monster wears her down it's her responsibility to become stronger. Coulson doesn't know the whole extent of her nightmares of Ward, asleep or awake, and she plans on keeping it that way.

Suddenly she doesn't feel comfortable talking about it anymore, not with the way Coulson is looking at her; the fear that he might be able to tell exactly what she is thinking grips her.

"What now?" she asks. Meaning what tomorrow, what from here on. A charged, unfair question. At two in the morning in the middle of a quiet, creepy base, it seems almost surreal. Tomorrow is not a certainty.

She watches him swallow.

"I don't know," he says.

"That's not something one likes to hear from the Director of SHIELD."

"Can I just not be the Director of SHIELD for just a moment, for the length of a beer? That's all."

He sounds desperate, pleading with her to define him. 

She nods, and finds herself swallowing hard, too, like she feels on the edge of something dangerous or delicate or both.

"Of course." Then, softer: "If I can _not_ be your subordinate for a while, as well."

"That sounds..."

"Risky?"

"I was gonna say _unwise_."

"But can I?" she presses. She never presses when it comes to Coulson. "Can I not be Agent Skye for a moment?"

Eventually he nods. Eventually after looking at her in the eye for far too long, like it's a trick question.

(It's a trick question)

"For a moment," he replies.

She brings her lips to his cheek for _a moment_ , that moment in which she is allowed. She can smell the day's work on him, feel the need of a shave in his skin, here in the middle of the night. She doesn't know what to do with her hands, so she curls her fingers into a fist and presses it against the leather of the couch. Her hands are different now, weathered by her training and she wonders if Coulson has noticed the difference. (Ward noticed, Ward noticed her arms, Ward noticed her body, Ward...)

She likes how the side of his face feels against her nose, her hair tickling his temple.

It's innocent. It's about him not being here and Skye missing him.

It's innocent, or it _could be_ innocent.

It could be innocent if it wasn't for the fact that it goes on for to long.

(it could be innocent if it wasn't for the fact that Skye doesn't want it to)

When she sits back Coulson arches one eyebrow. It's not judgemental, and he is not alarmed – he doesn't even look surprised by what she has just done.

"What was that about?" he asks.

"I already told you, I've missed you. Didn't I tell you?" Coulson shakes his head ever so slightly. "Oh well."

She kisses him again. Still almost chaste, almost ambiguous, her closed mouth pressed to the corner of his lips for a moment. She feels the line of his mouth and realizes she wants him. She didn't know this, not before he started going away, disappearing. She didn't know this until she didn't have his face to look at every day.

"Skye..."

"No, you don't have to say anything. It's okay."

He fixes her a very serious look. It stills her somehow, like she suspects he needs her to pay full attention to what he has to say. Which is funny, because when he finally says something his voice comes out a thin thread, barely audible if they weren't sitting so close to one another.

"Right now I'm... I _can't_."

He looks pained. 

"I know, it's fine."

"I want to."

"You do?" she asks, without meaning to, she smiles without meaning to.

He brings his hand to the back of her neck and draws her in for a proper kiss. It's slow and she can taste his exhaustion beneath the beer and the warmth. He makes a satisfied sound when she opens her mouth under his and it's profoundly sexy to her and though Skye didn't know she wanted this twenty minutes ago – she only knew she missed him – now she wonders how she could have lived without this feeling in the bottom of her stomach. The kiss is not demanding but it's not reluctant either. Coulson knows what he wants. Did he know before her? She has so many questions she knows she can't ask.

When he pulls away his fingers are still playing with her hair. He doesn't let go yet. 

"I told myself you were a distraction," Coulson admits.

"I didn't –"

He shakes his head, fingertips drawing comforting little circles over the hot skin of her back, right above the cut of her shirt. She keeps herself rooted to the spot to stop her body from following that touch, pressing back into his hand.

"No, it's not on you, it's on me," Coulson tells her. His voice hasn't been this soft in months. "You have done nothing wrong. I'm the one to blame. Right now everything is –"

"A lot."

That gets her a smile. One of his old, before-everything-started-changing smile. Except there was never such a time. Everything is always changing between them.

"You could say. And this is... for me this is too absorbing. I needed to put it out of my mind or I wouldn't have been able to do what I had to do. I wouldn't have been able to stay away for so long, in the first place."

Skye pulls back, smiling, and Coulson's hand slips from her back to her shoulders. He hasn't stopped touching her. If this is how thing could be between them Skye can't feel too guilty about pulling his carefully constructed defenses down. He hasn't touched her all winter and now he looks like he can't physically tear his fingers away from her.

"So what you are saying is that you missed me too?" she asks, the smile turning into a pleased grin of conceit.

He lets out a heavy breath. "Badly."

And it sounds like it.

It's so honest and so hopeless, it cuts through Skye, because he looks so hopeless and lost about it. She can't help to feel a bit happy about it, too. She has done this to him.

"I can wait. It's... _HYDRA_ , of course I can wait," she says. He gives her a shy smile. He doesn't look anything like a Director of SHIELD right now. She can wait but not for everything. She had tried to put some things out of her mind because she was missing him, but now he's here. "But I know you, Coulson. And I know you are hiding something from me."

His whole expression shuts down. She watches him pull back from wherever he was.

At least he doesn't try to deny it.

"You know how I feel about lies so I hope you know what you're doing," she adds. He says nothing. "I figured."

She moves her body away, towards the edge, until his hand finally falls from her shoulder. It seems to catch him by surprise, a thud when his palm hits the leather.

She gets up from the couch. She is not going to start this if he is still going to keep that up. That can't be no start for them, just more standing still, or pushing back.

Coulson stops her, wrapping his fingers around her wrist.

"Skye, wait. Stay."

She turns to him. His eyes. He's gone back to that place. She can see him try.

"I will," she says, voice still sharp because he has to know she means it. "But on that one condition."

Coulson nods. "Yes. I'll tell you everything. Please. Please, stay."

She sits down again.

Her gaze is unrelenting and she can see his fear – he is afraid she'll leave. Good. He wants to hold on to her. He wants he wants he wants. The same things as her. Now that Skye knows she can't let him screw it up.

Coulson lets got of her hand, doesn't try to touch her again. But he offers the truth, and that is more important.

"So. About those symbols I've been making you investigate," he starts.

They start.


End file.
